Plesk vs cPanel – Battle of the hosting control panels

When it comes to web hosting control panels, it’s clear that your choice is PleskvscPanel. Both dominate the market of server management tools, with good reputations and customer trust. It’s a clash of the server titans.

About Plesk and cPanel

Plesk has helped system administrators for over 10 years. Because of its better control interfaces, admins can manage their servers more efficiently. The latest Plesk Onyx is available in Windows and Linux and is designed to work unobtrusively, manage performance and gatekeep in the shadows.
cPanel first appeared in 1996. As its a pioneer in this market, cPanel still has a dedicated fanbase for its obsolete products. Even though its current offering is called cPanel 68. Newer iterations of this popular solution are a kind of welding together of cPanel. This facilitates customer account management and Web Host Manager (WHM) which tackles server administration.

Plesk vs cPanel – Usability

CLI (command line interface) is an option for each of these interfaces. But most users will no doubt want to unlock their goodies via the GUI (graphical user interface).
Most users favour Plesk over cPanel for its tidier GUI, which makes it simpler to understand and more intuitive to use. Its approach is to group tools on the left of the screen – as that’s the side people start reading from. And you can find more options buried under each tool.
cPanel’s approach comes from the ‘garden shed’ approach to GUI design. Because the designers seem to have just thrown everything in there and shut the door. The redeeming feature that helps it claw back some points in the Plesk vs cPanel contest is that you can modify the interface to suit your own preferences.

Your Security

Both solutions boast a variety of features designed to make servers bulletproof. Or at least, safe from incursions by nefarious bots and their human handlers.
But Plesk offers features such as fail2ban – which prevents intrusions, active directory integration, and spam defence for email. Meanwhile, cPanel offers automatic installation of SSL certificates, directories with password protection and IP address denials.

Best Features

Plesk and cPanel give clients identical features to manage accounts and servers. Users can configure DNS settings, manage email accounts and databases. And they also get FTP (File Transfer Protocol) facilities. The cPanel experience can be bolstered with extra apps. But Plesk hits the ground running with straight-out-of-the-box access to more helpful apps and extensions.
Plesk supports Docker for Linux, putting the 200,000 image Docker catalogue at their users’ fingertips through the web hosting control panel. And the Gitman extension makes Git use a feature too. In contrast, cPanel users can only enjoy the same experience via complicated workarounds. Which may not really be ideal.

Plesk vs cPanel: Distros

As we said before, Plesk runs on both Linux and Windows Server, while cPanel is a Linux-only deal. True, you can achieve Windows-server-compatibility, but only via certain tweaking and fiddling.
CentOS, CloudLinux and RedHat Enterprise Linux are the only OS incarnations supported by cPanel. In contrast, Plesk works with 14 Linux distros that include Debian, CentOS, and Ubuntu. This in addition to being compatible with Windows servers.

Plesk vs cPanel – what’s your decision?

After reading this far, it’s obvious that your ideal web hosting control panel will be largely dictated by your server’s OS. But as a human who has to use an interface every day, you want to choose the one that makes your life easier. With 100+ extensions and a more intuitive interface, Plesk seems like the current winner. Though both solutions are feature-rich, the Plesk vs cPanel face-off must be won by the new kid on the block.